All Posts By jacob

If you underestimate what loyalty, pride, determination, and commitment can produce in a man, you need to hear the story of Hiroo Onado.

On 2^nd September 1945, the World War II officially ended when Japan formally surrendered to the allied forces. Germany and Italy had already surrendered, and thus Japan’s surrender meant end of atrocities after 2194 days of hostility, deaths and bombings. However, this was not to be. Several pockets of isolated fighters continued fighting, an in one such team was a man by the name Hiroo Onoda.

Hiroo Onoda was a soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army who was stationed in the Lubag Island in the Philippines. He had been trained in the field of guerrilla warfare, sabotage, counterintelligence, and propaganda, and so when his team was overpowered by American forces, he retreated to the woods and kept fighting. His aim was to keep the allied forces busy and occupied, so that they would take longer to invade Japan. Hiroo did his duty diligently, where he would launch guerrilla attacks on the Filipino police and villages. Unfortunately, the war ended but Hiroo never got to know about it. In his thinking, he knew that Japan would never surrender until the last man was dead. His mission was to defend Japan unto death.

For 29 years, authorities tried various methods to make him surrender. They dropped leaflets in the woods announcing that Japan had surrendered and all soldiers should drop arms and surrender. Hiroo was unmoved; he thought that to be a propaganda tactic to make him surrender. They dropped photos and letters from his family asking him to come home, but Hiroo would have none of it. He continued hiding and attacking villages and civilians until the last day when something made him surrender.

When Japan realized that their man would never back down, they located his commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who went to Philippines to give him an order to lay down his arms. With that, Hiroo emerged from the woods with his service rifle and sword still in excellent shape. He was appalled that Japan had actually surrendered 29 years earlier, and was welcomed to a new reality. Hiroo died later at the age of 91.

What can an army of 300 Hiroos accomplish?

Do you believe in miracles? Do you believe in ghosts? You would want to imagine that seeing one would make you decide if they exist or not. Unfortunately, that may not be so. This excerpt from a book I am reading puts it into perspective. Read below:

In all my life I have met only one person who claims to have seen a ghost. And the interesting thing about the story is that the person disbelieved in the immortal soul before she saw the ghost and still disbelieves after seeing it. She says that what she saw must have been an illusion or a trick of the nerves. And obviously she may be right. Seeing is not believing.
For this reason, the question whether miracles occur can never be answered simply by experience. Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. And our senses not infallible. If anything extra ordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.

Miracles, By C.S Lewis

Consequently, even if you witnessed someone being raised from death, you would most likely belief that he was not fully dead. If you witnessed someone being healed of a deadly disease, you would likely add that to the statistics of people who survive terminal illnesses. If you want to explore the philosophical question of the existence or validity of Miracles, read this book Miracles by CS Lewis.

When the digital mobile phone was invented in the 90s, it was a giant leap for mankind. We had managed to jack out the cable from the telephone shown below, and also add a new exciting feature called a Short Message Service (SMS), as well as a convenient feature called a phone-book.

The phonebook meant that we got to know who is calling without having them introduce themselves, and we could easily avoid picking calls from our debtors. The benefits of this technology cannot fully be measured, and maybe only the former landline service providers know what the mobile phone did. Imagine the dates that were cancelled because someone called while you were in the shower, or job interviews missed because the HR could not reach you using the nearest telephone booth? The mobile phone stands as the greatest invention since the flush toilet.

Over the 30 years of its existence, the mobile phone underwent some evolution. Initially it was big and heavy, then every manufacturer was in the race to get a smaller phone. When they had gotten so small and sleek, touch screens came around, and there was a need to get a bigger screen, and so the size started to grow again. Of course, other additional features influenced this trend. This includes better and more powerful processors, 3G and 4G networks, and better operating systems. Apps landed in their millions, and the data transfer speeds increased. Mobile phones became mini computers, and gave birth to smartphone and tablets. It is said that the average smartphone today has more processing power than the computers that were used to land man on the moon some 5 decades ago. The mobile phone has really grown.

And herein lies the problem. While we thought we had put a mobile calling device in our pockets, we ended up with powerful computing devices in our pockets. These devices can do so many things, which would shock people who lived in the 90s.

Thus, we can now access our offices away from work. We can answer emails any time. We can read the latest people magazine article as soon as it is published. We can keep up with hundreds of friends and fake friends all over the globe. We can follow proceedings of war in Yemen, a musician from Korea, and Donald Trump theatrics from the US. We can publish videos and websites that can be accessed from all over the world within minutes, and we have access to millions of books, games, and apps. We need the smartphone to find directions, to book and remember our appointments, to apply for jobs and source for talents, and even to study online. The small window that is our smartphone opens into a world of endless opportunities.

This has brought about challenges like information overload, privacy concerns, problem of being always connected and lack of separation of work and rest. We have no time to reflect and meditate. We follow strangers on social media, but do not know our neighbors. We have enough time for social media, but not time to read the good books. We play games with strangers millions of miles away, but have no time to play with our children. Many times we call everybody except the people that we need to talk to, and end up feeling guilty. We seem so full of life, while inside we are void of anything. We are fixated on superstars far away, and forget every day heroes on our doorsteps. We download cool wallpapers, but forget to notice flowers growing in our yards.

Like the famous horse that led to the all of heavily fortified city of Troy, the smartphone can easily bring us down. We need salvation from our smartphones.

A small clock, which had just been finished by its maker, was put on a shelf in his shop between two old clocks that were busily and loudly ticking away the seconds.

“So,” said one of the old clocks to the newcomer, “you’ve just started this task. I feel sorry for you. You are bravely ticking now, but you’ll be very tired once you’ve ticked thirty three million times.”
“Thirty three million ticks?” said the startled clock, “but I could never do that!” He immediately stopped in desperation.
“Come on, stupid,” said the other clock. “Why do you listen to such talk? That’s not how things are. At each moment you only need to tick once. Isn’t that easy? And then again. That’s just as easy. Carry on like that.”
“Oh, if that’s all,” the new clock cried, “then that’s easy enough. Off I go.”

And he began again to bravely tick each moment, without paying attention to the months and millions of ticks. When the year was up, he had ticked thirty three million times without realising it.

6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 9 Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

1 Timothy 6: 6- 10

If there is any scripture that I think is relevant to young people, I think it is this one and I can say that if we seek God’s help to live by this scripture, we will do well. If I were to summarize the important lessons I have or still learning, these would be:

1. Live within your means. God will give you everything you will ‘need’, not want. The way I am going with my life these days is to dependent on the Lord and bring my needs to him in prayer. What I need, I pray for and when God does not answer my specific prayer, I know that is not His will for me, full stop!
2. When I pray for a need, it is up to God to decide how to meet it. I used to be ‘prescriptive’ in my requests to God – in other words, I would pray for a need and then suggest to God how He should answer the prayer. If I pray for job in order to meet needs for shelter and food, and school fees, etc, it is up to God to decide how to meet those needs. Sometimes I have seen God meeting my needs by keeping my expenses down or keeping me in good health – or keeping my mum in good health so that I am not having to need the money to meet those needs. 
3. Everything I have belongs to God – I am privileged to be a steward. So I pray for how I spend God’s money entrusted to me. There are times I feel led to meet certain needs and even if my money is not enough, I see God supplying what I need for where he is leading. It is a privilege to be generous as we are a channel of God’s blessings to the others.
4. Remember it is the Love of Money – not the money itself, that is the root of all kinds of evil. My prayer and the discipline I seek for is not to love the money but God himself. Money has a way of seeking our allegiance and love – and it is a trap we must seek God’s help to deal with, just like in other areas such as sexual purity and other forms of greed. 
5. Use money as a means not an end. Use it to serve God’s purposes both for yourself and for His work.

Courtesy of Joshua Wathanga